Tag Archives: Modest Mouse

The Republic Tigers don’t need any help to get noticed. They’re going to be hot, but — bonus — they’re good to boot.

These college kids have the full flex of Alexandra Patsavas behind them. I remember being excited a long time ago that she was going to be in charge of a label (Chop Shop, a subsidiary of Atlantic), and this is (finally) her first project. It’s sure to launch, Kennedy Space Center style, particularly after they play David Letterman in a month and then start touring with Nada Surf, an excellent pairing.

Buildings and Mountains, featuring excellent backing vocals, is their first single. If you download it at RCRD LBL, then the band gets paid even though the mp3 is free via the miracle of advertising. It’s at the bottom of that interview with Patsavas. What’s the song like? Well … maybe the mellow bits of Modest Mouse?

The video for that track is quite nice, as well. Very simple, but mesmerizing. This Kansas City, MO, band has the potential to flesh out an exciting range of emotions in their 2008 release Keep Color. I’m looking forward to seeing more.

Recently a friend told me a funny story about a death in the family. The laughter felt just a tiny bit wrong, but it was exactly right.

AV Club wrote an interesting but silly piece about the top 26 inappropriate songs to play at a funeral, called Don’t Taunt the Reaper. In the spirit of the funny funeral story, I have given this topic some amount of thought. But before we get to my nominees, here’s the best of theirs:

AV Club also listed a Pixies song, Cactus, and an Eels song, Last Stop: This Town, but I decree they’re the wrong songs from those bands.

My top choice is the Eels‘ It’s a Motherfucker (Being Here Without You). The rest of the lyrics aren’t particularly compelling, but that line and the sound of the song (listen to part of it here) make perfect wake music. Maybe too perfect for the AV Club’s list of inappropriate songs, actually. [To be filed under random awesome quote, E says, “I’m not trying to fuck anyone’s mother here. Let’s just establish that right now.”]

“And the bastard you hated the most / Will stand up and give you a toast / He’ll say We were such good friends especially near the end / Then he’ll feel up your girlfriend in front of your ghost.”

The Pixies are an obvious choice. Dead, In Heaven, Wave of Mutilation, Into the White, Monkey Gone to Heaven, Ed is Dead … and there are many that don’t quite make the list like I Bleed or There Goes My Gun … but I have to go with Ed is Dead for the lyrics and mood, combining to be an inappropriate yet apt funeral song. The problem is that any Pixies song (see Dead) that’s about death could just as much be about sex. Or maybe that’s not a problem at all. The Pixies are good like that.

And last but not least, Modest Mouse. They sing about death quite often, with a proper fierceness, insisting that we remember “we are our own damn coffins.” That line is from Satin in a Coffin. Great titles, but not really great lyrics for a funeral, include Bury Me With It or Black Cadillacs. But perhaps the greatest MM song for this project is Parting of the Sensory. Check the lyrics: “Dehydrate back into minerals” and “Some day you will die and Somehow something’s gonna steal your carbon.” And when you listen to the song, wait for the end when it’s swirling you down the drain in manic round after round of intensity.

I’m holding my breath for tickets to someday go on sale for the gigantic R.E.M, Modest Mouse, and The National summer tour promoting the April 1 rollout of R.E.M.‘s new disc Accelerate. Thanks to the wizards at Stereogum, we can listen to the track Supernatural Superserious, which has a big ole guitar hook and a radio-song friendliness.

R.E.M. has sort of faded out of the music scene’s consciousness, but if they would just ADD MORE SHOWS with this amazing line-up, they might be able to prove to all of us that InSound is right in its discussion of the 2007 live album/documentary release: “R.E.M. Live proves that the group packs a stronger punch live than they do in the studio.”

The combination of these three bands trumps all my misgivings about going to another amphitheater/arena venue. This is one of those moments when the music will easily transcend seats of any crappiness.

***The Take Away Show with The National doing their song Start a War is one of my very favorite things on the net; it seems it will be part of the film. Simple and perfect, and if you don’t listen to or watch anything else I recommend, at least humor me on this one.

These two were quite good, but I unfairly wanted them to be Wolf Parade and The Shins, respectively, so I never could fall for them wholeheartedly:
Random Spirit Lover ~ Sunset Rubdown
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? ~ Of Montreal (though it is my fav. Of Montreal disc)

I love the following artists. However good their 2007 discs may have been, they did not measure up to the artists’ previous releases, so they have been relegated to addendum status:
The White Stripes
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
José González
Spoon
The New Pornographers
Beirut (he swallowed up Alaska in Winter, too)
Modest Mouse
The Shins
Elliott Smith
The Polyphonic Spree